The Happily Ever After Boys
by M. D. Jensen
Summary: Two years after Trip’s death, all Malcolm has left are bits and pieces of them both.


Disclaimer: I do not own Malcolm, Trip, or any other characters mentioned. I also do not own the TV show itself. :insert bitter quip here: I also think I heard this title somewhere, but I can't remember. So it may or may not be mine.

Warning: Proofread to death but not betaed.

Summary: Two years after Trip's death, all Malcolm has left are bits and pieces of them both.

_The Happily Ever After Boys_

_"Sorry! Happy endings. I must think happy endings…"- Malcolm Reed, Shuttlepod One_

It can't be two years already, because that makes Malcolm old. Old, old, old, old, old. That makes him closer to forty-five than forty. That makes him one day closer to dying.

He can't be sad about that last one, actually. What he is sad about, though, is that it means he's lived another day without Trip.

Trip told him once about falling in love with a girl at summercamp and not realizing it until he'd already been home for a week. It's like that. Malcolm never paid enough attention to Trip when he was there; never really cared enough to commit every sentence of every conversation to memory. God knows he's kicking himself for it now.

_Nice shirt. Very… bright._

_Hey, green's my favorite color. What's yours, anyway? Out of curiosity._

_I don't have one._

_Don't have one? You've got to! Bet it's grey. Grey suits you, Malcolm._

Grey indeed. Grey and distorted. Bits and pieces of conversations, little snapshots- that's all he's got. He's not sure they would add up to even one complete person if somehow glued back together. Most of them aren't even in clear context. Just fragments of dialogue from a decade-long friendship that must have meant something, somewhere along the way.

_Creamy peanut butter?__ No, no, chunky all the way._

_Chunky?__ Can't spread that on pancakes, Trip._

_Not supposed to spread it on pancakes in the first place, Malcolm. Next thing you know it'll be no whipped cream on your sundaes._

_Shut up._

They must have talked about deeper things than that- they had to have. Malcolm had always walked away from their conversations feeling light-headed, dizzy and somehow inspired. So they must have discussed the Big Issues at one time or another. He's just forgetting them now, that's all.

_You write _poetry

_What's wrong with that?_

_It's so… British._

_If the shoe fits.__ Besides, you play the harmonica. How much more 'good ol' boy' can you get?_

_Ah, touché, I s'pose_.

Malcolm's written poems for Trip. Most of them include words like 'forever', 'loneliness' and 'bourbon'. But lately he hasn't been writing them much. Because most of them end with him crying.

_I lose you every day, for every dawn takes you away… rainclouds and lighting hide you from me. It will never be the same. It will never be the same._

From what he can remember of their conversations, most of their discussions of deeper topics ended the same way. Not crying, necessarily- neither of them were terribly good at that- but miserably staring out at the world and cursing it lethargically.

_You never used to be such a cynic._

_Things change._

_Don't they, though?_

_Yeah. Us too. We're a lot older, Mal. We're damn old in fact. I'm startin' ta feel it._

Maybe it's good that they tended to stick to how's-the-weather topics. Seen any good movies lately, how are things in the engine room? Often there wasn't time for anything else. But now that he's begun to remember what they really talked about, in truly honest moods, or while drunk, Malcolm can't stop the stream of memories. Like:

_I dreamed about her again_. And _She'll__ always be my baby_. And _I can't hold on much longer…_

It feels like a whirlpool running through his mind. Trapped in a shuttlepod. (Gotta think positively, Mal. Think happy endings. Later Trip himself would amend that.) Drunk in a bar. Standing on the Xindi disaster area, at his daughter's funeral… more than a few times over those ten years, Trip had ended up crying in Malcolm's arms. How could he have forgotten all this?

The rampaging thoughts begin to slow and Malcolm remembers, transfixed, as one he'd forgotten almost entirely begins to play out before his eyes. A conversation, three years after the end of baby Elizabeth, three years before the end of Trip Tucker. They had been in Malcolm's quarters, slightly drunk, when Trip had tilted his head back and spoken thoughtfully to the ceiling.

"I've been having this weird feeling, lately," he had admitted. "Like I'm goin' to my best friend's funeral."

Malcolm had raised his eyebrows. "I'm right here," he had responded, voice slightly slurred.

A shake of the head. "It's not that," Trip had explained. "It's more like a bad dream where… haven't you ever had that one? The one where you're the last to die. Haven't you ever felt that way? Just… dreading… that you'll be the last one to go? When I was a kid, I felt like that all the time, and it creeped me out. Now I've been feeling that way again." His voice had trailed off and he'd drained the rest of his glass, saying no more.

"You're drunk," Malcolm had replied after a moment. But even though they both had been, it didn't matter much. Didn't matter at all, really. The things he'd said had been true, in a way. Trip will never die the way Malcolm will- slowly, waking up a little deader each day. Trip will be perfectly preserved in his prime, forty-two years old and never to age again, in Malcolm's mind as Malcolm himself withers away slowly. Trip will indeed be the last to die, in a way.

In a strange, sort of hypothetical way that has no bearing on reality at all.

Malcolm realizes he's crying, sitting by himself in his quarters on the new ship that he and Trip don't serve on together. He puts his head in his hands and wills the tears to wash away the deeper memories and leave only the conversations about upgrading weapons, old western movies and pretty girls. It's not going to work, though. It never does.

Another memory: suddenly crystal clear. He hasn't recalled this one in years.

A toast, on Trip's birthday, just the two of them in a little bar in the middle of nowhere, just outside San Francisco. Malcolm raises his glad as Trip speaks.

"Forty. Damn, I'm old. Figured I'd be married off with three or four kids by now. To you and me, Malcolm. Never thought it'd turn out this way, but what the hell, it did. What the Goddamn hell, y'know? It's you and me, Mal… just the two of us, through it all. Damn. No _happily ever after's_ here. All for the best, though. I don't think guys like us were made for happy endings."


End file.
